It has been a while!!! I haven’t blogged in a week and a half and it’s been a combination of things. First of all, fall TV is here! And as much as I love to read, I also love me some This is Us, Grey’s Anatomy (yes I am still hanging in there on season 19 or something crazy like that), every single Chicago show imaginable, every single emergency show imaginable, A Million Reasons, yada yada yada.

Yes, I watch all the shows. In a month or so when 2/3 of the debut shows fail I’ll have a lot more time for reading!

I’ve also been reading other books. I mentioned that I read Crazy Rich Asians a couple of weeks ago and while I could blog about that book (she is certainly a female in MIL trouble), I just wasn’t feeling it for my blog. Obviously it was fabulous and I’ll definitely be reading the next one. But that’s about all I have to say about that.

Then I finished a book on Saturday and was so excited to blog about it…and almost clicked that “publish immediately” button until I realized the book isn’t out until mid November.. so you’ll read that review next week. So good news, I have another review coming in like 5 days!

I think we are good for now. I’m already about halfway through my next book…An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen. And it’s soooo good. Shocker right? Loved their last one, The Wife Between Us.

But I am constantly digressing.

From the Publisher:

In this gripping debut procedural, a young London policewoman must probe dark secrets buried deep in her own family’s past to solve a murder and a long-ago disappearance.

Your father is a liar. But is he a killer?
Even liars tell the truth… sometimes.

Twenty-six-year-old Cat Kinsella overcame a troubled childhood to become a Detective Constable with the Metropolitan Police Force, but she’s never been able to banish these ghosts. When she’s called to the scene of a murder in Islington, not far from the pub her estranged father still runs, she discovers that Alice Lapaine, a young housewife who didn’t get out much, has been found strangled.

Cat and her team immediately suspect Alice’s husband, until she receives a mysterious phone call that links the victim to Maryanne Doyle, a teenage girl who went missing in Ireland eighteen years earlier. The call raises uneasy memories for Cat–her family met Maryanne while on holiday, right before she vanished. Though she was only a child, Cat knew that her charming but dissolute father wasn’t telling the truth when he denied knowing anything about Maryanne or her disappearance. Did her father do something to the teenage girl all those years ago? Could he have harmed Alice now? And how can you trust a liar even if he might be telling the truth?

Determined to close the two cases, Cat rushes headlong into the investigation, crossing ethical lines and trampling professional codes. But in looking into the past, she might not like what she finds…

My Review:

Sweet Little Lies by Caz Frear was my August 2018 Book of the Month pick. So it has sat, in physical, not digital form, on the end table in my living room just waiting for me for almost two months. I find it odd that I pick a book I feel I cannot live without for another second longer, it ships quickly to me. And then just sits and waits. For months.

And as it took me a bit to pick it up, it also took a bit for me to get really into it once I started reading. Cat’s life is complicated. She comes from a dysfunctional family, but one that actually did pretty well. I think I usually think of troubled childhoods as being in squalor with crazy or neglectful parents. But that’s not always true. There is something to that saying, “money can’t buy happiness.”

So while she mostly grew up in a big house outside of London, the happiest time she can remember is when she lived over her father’s bar. They didn’t have much, but they had each other. But then it all changed without any good reason why, at least from Cat’s point of view.

But Cat has risen above. She is now a London police officer who has it together professionally, but no so much personally. When she is called to a murder scene, she can’t quite put a finger on why it makes her nervous, but she is unsettled that the body is found close to her father’s bar. Then we start learning stories from her past that reveal her father may have had something to do with a young girl’s disappearance many years ago.

The more I read, the more I wanted to find out more. And while it took me a while to get into the book, once I was hooked I finished the last half in one sitting. One thing that impressed me is that Frear did an amazing job continuing to spin a good story without giving anything away early. So when I did finally start to put the pieces together, I didn’t feel cheated but I was also surprised.

Frear does a great job developed Cat’s character and endearing her to the reader. As with many of these procedural type novels with a detective narrator, it appears to be kicking off a series, next book coming sometime in January 2019.

I definitely recommend this one to Tana French and Karen Slaughter fans.

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Published by Vicky

Why women in trouble? My husband likes to joke that I have a certain genre I like to read. Think Girl on a Train, Gone Girl, Pretty Baby...
All books with an average woman who finds herself in the middle of a nightmare.
I'll keep seeking them out, but I’ll take recommendations too. Thanks for stopping by!
View all posts by Vicky